Study notes on U.R. Anantha Murthy's 'Samskara'

Dharma in Samskara

In Hinduism, a person is offered many paths towards salvation depending on his or her caste. The only toll to pay on this path is that of dharma, or duty. If one fulfills one’s dharma, then one comes closer to liberation (moksa). For a woman, this means obeying her husband. For a brahmin man, this means living his life according to the four life-stages (asramas) and practicing the vedic rituals. In the novel, Samskara, U.R. Anantha Murthy contrasts many possible paths to salvation including that of Naranappa and that of Praneshacharya; at first glance, a sinner and a saint. However, throughout the novel it becomes less clear who, if either, of these two is actually performing their dharma. I do not believe that either Naranappa nor Praneshacharya are successful at performing the dharma of a brahmin man because neither fulfilled both the life stages and the performance of the rituals.

Dharma can be loosely translated to mean "duty... religion... justice... law... ethics... religious merit... principle... and right." (Flood 52) It is the idea that each person in society has a certain path or duty to follow and it is by following this path that a person obtains salvation. It is most important in Hinduism to act according to your dharma rather than just to believe that it is good to do so. (Flood 12) Dharma differs for each caste in Hindu society. For the brahmin male, in particular, it involves performing the vedic rituals and progressing through the four life stages, or asramas. "The four stages are: that of the celibate student (brahmacarya), householder (grhastha), hermit or forest-dweller (vanaprastha), and renouncer (samnyasa)." (Flood 62). In Samskara, both Naranappa and Praneshacharya are brahmin males living in the agrahara, Durvasapura. Praneshacharya is considered the wisest brahmin in the agrahara because he studied the Vedas in Kashi. Naranappa, on the other hand, cast off his brahminhood for more hedonistic ways. (Murthy 21) He leaves his wife for Chandri, a low-caste woman and begins to eat meat and keep company with Muslims. At the beginning of the novel, Chandri tells Praneshacharya that Naranappa has died. Thus, the central question of the first part of the novel becomes whether or not the brahmin men in the agrahara may perform the funeral rights for Naranappa. In other words, did Naranappa still possess his brahminhood despite the way he lived his life?

In attempting to answer this question, Praneshacharya begins a spiritual journey in which the question becomes whether or not he has truly fulfilled his dharma in the way he has lived his life. Murthy makes it obvious to the reader that this is the most important question in the novel by having Chandri secretly cremate Naranappa’s body. Thus, the question of the funeral rites no longer exists and the reader is forced to turn to the issue of Praneshacharya’s dharma and path to salvation.

Praneshacharya obviously experienced the life stage of a celibate student. His education is mentioned and praised many times throughout the novel. In the life stage of the celibate student, a brahmin man is expected to abstain from sex and study the Vedas. (Flood 62) The celibacy of this stage is necessary to retain energy for the study of the Vedas. It is a Hindu belief that semen contains energy that "can be sublimated for a religious purpose." (Flood 63) After a period of study is complete, the brahmin boy is expected to marry and enter the stage of the householder. However, I believe Praneshacharya never truly crossed to this stage because he married Bhagirathi, an invalid woman.

Part of the householder stage of life is experiencing desire, including sexual desire. However, with Bhagirathi as a wife, Praneshacharya was never able to experience that desire. More importantly, he purposefully chose to marry Bhagirathi in order to completely avoid sexual desire and intercourse. He attempted to move from the life of a celibate student to the life of a renouncer or forest-dweller in which a brahmin gives up desire. However, I believe that in order to make the life stages of the forest-dweller and renouncer meaningful, one must first experience desire. He tries to skip the stage of the "man-in-the-world" (Flood 89) and move directly to the life of a renouncer. Praneshacharya tries to have the best of all worlds by combining all four life stages. He attempts to exist in the social world among the brahmins while still attaining the spirituality and separateness of a renouncer or forest-dweller. He never seems able to give up the world of any stage in order to move to the next stage.

Naranappa, on the other hand, represents the other extreme. He sets out to experience desire whenever he can. He sleeps with Chandri, eats meat, and drinks liquor. He knows desire and gives into it at every moment he can. He leaves his wife, ignoring his duties as a householder and casts off the traditions of brahminhood altogether. Thus, neither Praneshacharya nor Naranappa completely fulfill their dharma. However, only Praneshacharya is given the opportunity to discover his past mistakes and perhaps learn from them.

The entire novel represents a samskara, or rite of passage, for Praneshacharya in which he attempts to discern the correct path to salvation by becoming a part of the world instead of a being beyond it. Praneshacharya had spent his whole life studying the Vedas and the Puranas without once knowing for himself what the desire they spoke of was like. He knew only of those things transcendent to this earth. Worldly desires were foreign to him because he avoided them. Praneshacharya’s samskara takes place in three phases similar to those of other Hindu samskaras like the upanaya for brahmin boys in which a young man is initiated into his time of learning the Vedas.

First, Praneshacharya is isolated from society. When he sleeps with Chandri, his immediate reaction is that he has lost all of his authority in the community. He feels that he is no better than Naranappa and that the other brahmin men should not pay attention to what he says. The action of sleeping with Chandri is the moment of his psychological separation from the community of the agrahara. He believes that he has fallen from grace for giving into his sexual desires.

Praneshacharya compares this fall from grace to "a baby monkey losing hold of his grip on the mother’s body." (Murthy 75) In other words, salvation was something Praneshacharya worked for his entire life. He laid out his path to salvation when he was sixteen by marrying Bhagirathi and never allowed desire or any other obstacle steer him from that path. The Lord did not choose Praneshacharya; Praneshacharya chose the Lord. The gambler in Praneshacharya’s story, however, was chosen by the Lord. A brahmin gentleman addicted to gambling could not rid himself of his vice no matter how hard he tried. After being shunned from his community he prayed to the Lord: "‘O, Lord! Why do you make me a gambler?’" (Murthy 48) The gods answered his call instead of appearing to the brahmins in the temple. The life of conflict turned out to be the quicker path to salvation than a life like Praneshacharya’s in which conflict was avoided at all costs.

After his psychological separation from the community, Praneshacharya experiences a physical isolation, as well. He leaves the agrahara after he cremates his wife and begins to wander the forest. At this point he exists in a phase of transition which lasts the rest of the novel. This is the usual second stage to a samskara. During this time, Praneshacharya becomes more aware of the physical world around him. He recognizes beauty (in Chandri) and ugliness (in his wife) for the first time. But, at the same time, his transition is not yet complete. He expects people to recognize him as the "Crest-Jewel of Vedanta Philosophy." (Murthy 115) He is still primarily unable to look at the world from a view other than a transcendent one. He still sees himself as not yet of the world but above it.

It is at the car-festival that Praneshacharya reaches a revelation about his place in the world. Taking in all the spectacles of the festival he suddenly realizes: "That art Thou." (Murthy 121) Everything around him, is also part of him; and he, in turn, is a part of it all. The narrator in the essay, "‘All That is You,’" comes to the same realization. At first it seems exciting and beautiful to the narrator. She sees herself in all the good things of the world. But then she comes to understand that she is not only part of the good but the bad as well. She cannot say to a butterfly: "That is you." unless she also says of Hitler and the Nazis: "They are you." Up until this point at the car-festival, Praneshacharya most probably did experience a sense of oneness with the world, but only with the transcendent world. He certainly saw himself in the Vedic teachings and in his teachers when he was a student. But he never allowed himself to carry that feeling out to other parts of the world. At first he probably felt that way about his friend Mahabala at Kashi but as soon as Mahabala fell from grace Praneshacharya ceased to see himself as part of that "sinner." At the car-festival, Praneshacharya finally realizes that he is not only part of the brahmin world but of the low-caste world as well. In other words, he belongs not only to the transcendent but to the earthly. This brings him one step closer to knowing that he is part of the whole world.

Praneshacharya comes to the knowledge that he is not immune to "desire," nor should he be a stranger to its "fulfillment." (Murthy 121) Throughout his life, Praneshacharya had struggled to avoid desire in order to attain salvation. He planned his path to salvation while he was still a child and did only those things in life that allowed him to continue on this path, including marrying his wife. At the very beginning of the novel, Praneshacharya says that marrying Bhagirathi makes him "‘ripe and ready’" (Murthy 2) the implication being that it made him ready for salvation. At the end of the novel, it begins to become clear to Praneshacharya that he married Bhagirathi not because he felt compassion towards the invalid woman to follow his path to salvation. He did not marry Bhagirathi because he was compassionate but because he was selfish.

When the novel ends, Praneshacharya is still in his liminal phase. He comes to no concrete conclusion about what to do. He merely gets on the cart to Durvaspara. It is clear that Praneshacharya was unable to fulfill his dharma as a brahmin because he never let himself experience any of the life stages fully. Naranappa did not completely fulfill his dharma either because he did not follow the vedic rituals. Murthy makes the point in Samskara that brahminism in must be a combination of the two forms exhibited by Praneshacharya and Naranappa. A brahmin cannot afford to be completely of the world as Naranappa was because he will lose the qualities that have made him a brahmin since the beginnings of vedic tradition; namely, the rituals. But he cannot afford to be completely beyond the world either as was Praneshacharya because then he will not know conflict or desire and; thus, to renounce them would be meaningless. To live either as Praneshacharya did or as Naranappa did is too easy and will not lead to salvation. To be able to do both; to live part of your life as a householder, experiencing the worldly desires, and then to be able to shun those desires and live as a renouncer, is the hardest thing of all and perhaps the only way to fulfill the dharma of a brahmin.

                                  

RELIGION, CASTE AND MODERNITY: A STUDY OF U.R. ANATHAMURTHY'S SAMSKARA

U.R. Ananthmurthy's Samskara has already achieved the status of a classic. It is one of the most important post-independent novels written in India which studies both metaphysical and social aspects of Hinduism. It is very well known that the main aim of the religion is to liberate the human beings. So the human beings follow the rituals and prayers and other dictates of the religion in order to gain an entry into the paradise; and to attain moksha as in the case of Hinduism. Religion not only controls the spiritual life of the individuals, but also the social lives of the adherents. Impact of religion starts before the birth of an individual and continues even after death. It plays a major role in shaping the psyche of an individual and influences his decisions regarding marriage, and social relations. In the case of Hinduism, the most well known social practice that has been studied by the scholars in India and abroad is that of casteism. Samskara studies not only the spiritual aspect of Hinduism and the caste system, but also orthodoxy in rituals. The sociological and anthropological studies that have been done in the field of religion and casteism have tried to study them from the scientific point of view, but the novel treats them in a literary way. Without commenting directly on anything, the novelist tells his story and leaves the job of interpretation to the readers. The current paper is an attempt to study the novel as a treatise on the ways of achieving moksha and the validity of casteism from religious point of view, and its impact on the Indian social system.

        The first theme that is taken up by the novel is about life after death. One of the greatest metaphysical aspects of the religions is that they offer glorious life after death in paradise to their selected followers. They have also laid different criteria to judge the eligibility of the pious candidates who vow for it. This criterion generally includes: following a set of rules, leading an honest, faithful and pious life. The Hindus yearn for even a step further and want to achieve moksha , a kind of supra-existence which means freedom from the cycle of birth and death. But what is the best way of achieving that supra-existence is the question that has been contemplated by the human beings since the rise of religion. The question becomes even more important because of the diversity in Hindu beliefs and culture. Murthy probes this question through the character of a Brahmin named Praneshacharya who is renowned in South India for his knowledge of scriptures and is known as “crest jewel of Vedic learning.”

         Another important issue that has been taken up in the novel is that of caste. It not only probes if the caste has its origin in the religion, but also its impact on the people of different castes. The first difference that is evident between the Brahmins and the lower caste is that of complications in social life. The life of Brahmins is full of complications while the life of the untouchables is remarkably simple. This is evident from the title of the novel which also means the last rites of a person, for the Brahmins this is a very complex affair as they are forbidden to eat anything while the uncremated body is lying there in the agrahara. In addition to that there are a lot many rituals connected with the last cremation rites and there are lot many things at stake also. The Brahmins are afraid that they might lose their Brahminhood by cremating Naranappa who did not lead a life of an orthodox Brahmin. This complicated ritualistic affair is compared with the cremation rites of the untouchables who just leave the bodies and “fired the huts (Samskara, 40).”When the novel was published it was a centre of lot of controversy for its portrayal of the Brahmins. U.R. Ananthamurthy has himself written:

I remember once a mild-mannered, hospitable woman who had served me lunch, beckoned to me as I was preparing to leave. 'Nobody likes us anymore. Why do you poke fun at us? If you had ridiculed members of other castes could you survive? Because we endure it even when people sneer at us, everybody chooses to ridicule us. Is that the right thing to do?'(2005:3)

  There is no doubt that the Brahmins in the novel are described in a very negative light. In the agrahara of Durvasapura we do not find even a single Brahmin who is described in positive words with the only exception of Praneshacharya. Their bodies are shown to be deformed and they are shown to know all kinds of sins: “sins of gluttony, sins of avarice and love of gold”(Samskara, 24). Portrayal of Brahmin males is somewhat positive as there are no untouchable male characters in the novel to compare with, but the portrayal of Brahmin females is most damaging as they are described as “short, plump and round” Samskara, 31) and their cheeks “sunken,” breasts “withered” and mouths “stinking of lentil soup” (Samskara,37). The Brahmin females in the novel are all asexual objects devoid of any feminine charms. Moreover, they are all greedy and scheming ladies who have strong lust for gold and wealth. On the other hand, the untouchable females are described as the epitomes of feminine beauty. In the novel Chandri is described as “utterly beautiful, beyond compare,” and while telling his friends about Chandri, Sripati challenges his friends: “In a hundred-mile radius, show me such a doll, and I 'll say, you're a man” (Samskara, 38). The Brahmin females are compared with untouchable girls like Chandri and Belli who are not only sexually attractive, but also faithful and good hearted. Chandri readily parts away with the gold ornaments for the cremation rites of her beloved Naranappa, while Brahmin females start competing with one another in coveting for that gold. The portrayal of Brahmin women as asexual objects seems unjust when we have a look at the Brahmin ladies like Hema Malini, Sonali Bendre, Vidya Balan and Moushmi Chatterji and others who are considered among the most beautiful females. But here the novelist lets his own thoughts, own biases seep in the text. In the novel he is not depicting the Brahmins in negative light, but the practitioners of untouchability.

     In his personal life U.R. Ananthmurthy has been a very vocal against the caste system. In his Author's note to Bharathipura he has written: 

“If you ask me what is the worst of the Indian civilization, I would say it is untouchability. I can understand slavery-a slave can fight back-but untouchability gets internalized. The victim gradually begins to feel he is untouchable”(2010:x). 

    There is no doubt that Brahmin males and females are portrayed in the most negative light in the novel, but by showing them like this the novelist seems to portray the idea that the people who do physical work gain physical beauty so the untouchable females are beautiful while the Brahmin females are “plump.”

      There are some people who have argued that caste system is a part and parcel of Hinduism, the writer himself was acutely aware of that. In his essay “Five Decades of my Writing” he tells: 

“The world I grew up assumed that the caste system and the hierarchies associated with it were rock-like and permanent and God-made”(2007:17). 

These myths are broken by the writer through the character of Praneshacharya. The novelist shows that when a savant like Praneshacharya can misinterpret the Dharma then the others surely can. Then there is an incident in the novel where Praneshacharya recalls the story of a brahmin who was “debarred from the places of sacrifice” (Samskara, 48) because he was addicted to gambling, but even then the gods came to answer the gambler's call. This incident clearly shows that when the Gods can go to answer the gambler's call then surely they cannot be so prejudiced against some human beings to label them untouchables, and thus the practice of untouchability is not of divine origins as some people have called it to be. Praneshacharya himself believes in the concept of pollution as in the beginning of the novel he does not want to talk to Chandri because “he would be polluted”(Samskara, 2). Towards the end of the novel 

   Praneshacharya does not want to sit and eat in the temple because he is in pollution period. There is a popular belief that if any person in pollution will eat in the temple then the temple chariot will not move. Praneshacharya eats in the temple but the temple chariot does not stop. So the pollution caused by his wife's death proves to be a myth. Similarly the pollution caused by the touch of human beings and the entire system of untouchability based on the notion of inferiority of human beings is a myth which needs to be demolished. It is important that these thoughts have been aired by the author in many of his essays: “Hinduism means many things to many people. It is the worship of Nirakar Brahman, as well as fulfilling the most selfish desires through vratas. It says that this creation is the manifestation of God, and, it also holds the most rigid kind of caste system”(2007:305). This statement by Murthy brings out the essential dichotomy of the people who practise untouchability. The question that is posed by the writer is if every human being is a manifestation of God then how some of us can be untouchables. The people who believe that casteism has religious sanction often quote Manu Smriti as the source. There is the reference to the text in the novel also. But it should be noted that Hinduism does not start or end with Manu Smriti. Hinduism is a dynamic tradition that keeps on changing with time so it cannot be identified with the religious texts like Vedas or Upanishadas or Manu Smriti. There are number of texts in Hinduism which are interrelated and independent at the same time. For example somebody facing the question of Sri Krishna's killing in Mahabharata will find the reason behind it in Ramayana, but at the same time both the texts are different in their organisation and are separated by considerable time. So some shlokas occurring in the Manu's text cannot be considered as the sole basis for caste system, before doing that the other texts are to be consulted also. For example a hymn in Rigveda tells about the occupation based caste system rather than the birth based:

A bard a m I, my dad's a leech, mammy lays corn upon the stones.Striving for wealth, with varied plans, we follow our desires like kine.(Indiya Web) (Rig Veda hymn CXII Soma Pavamana)
   The hymn tells about the three persons of same family doing the job of three different castes. Similarly in Bhagvad Gita Sri Krishna says: “The four divisions of society (the wise, the soldier, the merchant and the labourer) were created by me according to the natural distribution of qualities and instincts” (Web). These two shlokas from the two important books definitely show that the caste system was not based on birth it was rather based on occupation and the system was fluid where everybody was able to change his or her caste according to his or her abilities. This point is also emphasised in Mahabharata: “That Shudra who is ever engaged in self-control, truth and righteousness, I regard him a Brahmin. One is twice born by conduct alone It is also important to note that caste system is only supported in Dharm Sutras and Smritis, but they never had the same status as the other religious canon known as Shruti (Vedas and Upanishdas) and “it is laid down that whenever there is a conflict between the shruti and smriti literature, it is the former that prevails. It is Manusmriti, which is particularly supportive of caste system but where it conflicts with Vedas and Upanishads, the latter would prevail”(p.4786).

       The kind of critique Ananthmurthy has attempted could have been done by a Brahmin only. The novel becomes even more important as it is an account of an insider, an experience of a person who was a member of a community that practised untouchability. The novel is indeed a strong critique of the caste system and effectively proves that it has no place in the modern society and at the same time also proves that it has no religious sanction as argued by many. Moreover, the novel becomes even more authentic social document when we come to know that it is not entirely fictional and is based on the childhood experiences of the writer. The writer himself tells: “In my village everyone thought that Samskara was a totally realistic novel, and they identified every character with a living person in the agrahara. And when I went back to my village the woman next door said, “Oh Anathu, you have created Chandri perfectly.” Each and every character was real”(2007:370). Taking the raw material from his life, the writer remarkably proves that caste system has no sanction in the religion and at the same time proves that orthodoxy too is an alien concept for Hinduism which is dynamic and mobile and always ready to accept changes